>>Can you not use isolated scope, pass in the panes collection to be used and assign that the 'panes' - simple example : http://jsfiddle.net/joshdmiller/fhvd9/
>
>That means complete re-design again and going back to what I had originally. But sounds like it may be a good thing and we eventually switch to that.

Hmm. You don't show (in your directive) how 'panes' is actually populated at present but I don't see how it would require a major change?